MEDIA, MISINFORMATION, AND BLASPHEMY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE MASHAL KHAN CASE

Abstract

Blasphemy accusations has been used as a tool of fear and social control in Pakistan for a long time. This paper aims to analyze the mainstream media and digital media portrayals of counterdiscourses of justice, condemnation, and reform, as a response to the 2017 lynching of Mashal Khan, a university student who was beaten to death by a mob on his own campus, after being falsely accused of blasphemy. Using Fairclough's (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis framework alongside Entman's (1993) framing theory, the study purposively analyzes social media posts, editorials, and op-eds from April 2017 to early 2018. Since the initial blasphemy accusations circulated through private WhatsApp groups and word of mouth rather than public platforms, this study focuses on the publicly visible counter-discourses that emerged in response. The findings reveal that mainstream and social media both condemned the violence but in distinctly different ways. Mainstream media offered structured institutional condemnation while social media served as an immediate grassroots space for outrage and demands for accountability. A key finding is the emergence of a resilient digital counter-narrative that challenged Pakistan's long-standing culture of fear surrounding blasphemy laws. The study contributes to scholarship on religion, media, and power by demonstrating how public discourse can resist religious extremism even in politically constrained environments.